Tell me again how Silicon Valley is supposedly all concerned about ethics and not doing evil. Because the clear and obvious news of the past few days shows the exact opposite. They get all horrified and unctuous about their sleaziness -Â after it’s been made public. Omigod, they squeal in faux concern, we are just shocked to discover we have been duplicitous, and perhaps have even broken the law, then promise to do better. This happens over and over. This is generally accompanied by lofty arble-garble about how they deeply care about their users, respect privacy, and care deeply about doing the right thing. Except if it interferes with making a sleazy buck.
Facebook continues to allow racially discriminatory housing ads, even after promising to stop doing it.
“The company still lets you exclude minority groups in housing ads, a violation of federal law”
It took a large public outcry to force Google, who owns YouTube, to remove videos that were almost certainly child abuse and which were getting millions of views..
“YouTube stepped up enforcement of its guidelines for videos aimed at children, the unit of Alphabet Google said on Wednesday, responding to criticism that it has failed to protect children from adult content.”
And of course Uber, whose business model appears to be ignore and break laws whenever possible and never ever do the right thing.
Regulators around the world are probing a massive data breach at ride-hailing service Uber and its apparent role in covering it up.
On Tuesday, Uber disclosed that hackers stole data from 57 million riders and drivers in an attack that happened in 2016. The company paid the hackers $100,000 to delete the data and keep the breach quiet.